Latvijas Vēsturnieku komisijas raksti - 23.sējums

Dr. Matthew Kott. What Does the Holocaust in the Baltic States Have to Do with the SS’ Plans?
Marrenbach’s invaluable role in steering DAF resources into building up the Germanische
Sturmbanne. 39 These constituted an organisational vehicle created by the SS for
channelling industrial labourers from the Germanic countries working in Germany into
military service with the Waffen-SS.
Of more interest to the topic at hand, however, is that Marrenbach turns up in early
July 1941 in Lithuania as part of a Sondergruppe of the Wehrmacht’s Wirtschaftsstab
Ost created to assess the opportunities for economic exploitation of the newly occupied
eastern territories. Additionally, Marrenbach’s outfit was also to advise the local SS
and police authorities concerning industrial matters. Having seen what Stahlecker and
Ehrlinger had accomplished during the “pogrom” phase of the Holocaust in Vilnius and
Kaunas, Marrenbach was appalled. His criticism of the murderous activities of EG A
was not, however, based on humanitarian concern for the fate of the Lithuanian Jews;
instead, he was most indignant about how the massacres were a waste of potential
slave labour for the Nazi, i.e. the SS, economy. 40
These few examples demonstrate that both Norway in 1940 and the Baltic area
in 1941, in their respective times, were of primary significance to Himmler’s plans. In
each case, Himmler sent hand-picked individuals to perform specific special tasks for
furthering the interests of the SS. The fact that several of these trusted representatives
recur in both times and places also suggests that there may be a link between the two
cases. Taken on its own, however, this striking overlap of important personnel is not
enough to clearly demonstrate a policy link in the mind of the SS leadership.
Police Battalion 9, Kongsvinger,
and education for genocide
A more clear reciprocal link is between the SS in occupied Norway and the Holocaust
in the Baltic States in the form of Police Battalion 9 (Polizeibataillon 9; PB 9) of the
German Ordnungspolizei (Orpo). The veritable explosion of new research into the Orpo
in recent years 41 allows us to move far beyond the pioneering work of Christopher
Browning’s Ordinary Men 42 in understanding the important place of the police soldiers
in Himmler’s plans for a new Europe. Not only it can now be seen that these units were
amongst the shock troops of the Holocaust in eastern Europe, but it is much clearer
than for Browning to what extent the martial and ideological training instilled the Orpo
as an institution, even if not necessarily all the individuals within it, with the SS ethos
of genocidal racial warfare. 43
With the help of the recent literature, we can gain a fuller picture of the deployment
history of PB 9, and tie it in to events in both Norway and the Baltic region. This unit
was created in September 1939 in the Berlin borough of Schöneberg from reservists
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